Fall Far and Never Land
by Inkfire
Summary: Albus Dumbledore's life was a story of rise and fall - always higher, always harder. Entry for the Songfics challenge on the Hogwarts Online forum.


**Here's something I wrote for the songfic challenge on the Hogwarts Online forum. My song is "Falling" by Florence + The Machine.**

* * *

Green light rocketed his way, and as he felt the breath fly out of him – one last time – he was free again.

* * *

_Flying, falling, flying, flying._

He'd always liked to fly. He loved the wind, the height, the high of that feeling – unreachable, the width of empty spaces, blue as his eyes, large as his soul.

It was lonely up there, the calm and beautiful kind, a contemplating, reflective solitude. He soared into the sky and _breathed_, and his father, his siblings, his house and tiny little life became only spots in the distance, small, so small.

* * *

Staring into Gellert Grindelwald's eyes was like the first spark of something irrevocably dangerous.

Fly did his mind and fall did his heart; collapsing from an arrogantly thrust-out ribcage to depths and depths of boiling, unknown, frightful territories he'd never known his own being to hold. Gellert had burning eyes and something distinctively wild in his crooked grin and always moving hands. He talked and talked, always way too fast, and his words swept Albus away to schemes and plans, vivid worlds, dizzying ideas. In two hours it was like life without Gellert would never be conceivable again.

It never was.

* * *

He wasn't scared at all.

He was eighteen and brilliant and the world belonged to hungry, powerful young men such as him and his friend, him and Gellert, Gellert and him bonded forever by this quest of theirs. He was not scared but his mind was flying and his heart was racing, there were no boundaries. Nothing but clear ether and this limitless world to embrace and to conquer. He was flying, drunk on mad ideas, on the thrill of power. He rose and rose and rose and _rose_ –

* * *

This world of theirs was a part of the whole, and as such it had rules they thought they were beyond.

Impeccable rules and clinical facts that dictated their flight: for one might soar straight up through the air, and oughtn't forget that only lines may shoot right ahead and never veer a hair's breadth.

Human beings flew high and fast, higher and higher until they reached a peak, tracing a curve that was destiny-shaped. And then the curve arched and slid into descent, and they fell, fell,_fell_– drawn downwards by irresistible pulls, only to land, or perhaps to crash.

The faster, the harder.

* * *

They thought they saw no ground and could only go up, faster, _more_ – more power or more beauty, more fury and more hope. Nothing could tie them down, nothing could slow their race except, perhaps, themselves. They didn't think of that then, believing they flew when they were already falling – boundless, limitless, dropping off reality in a release they called freedom.

And all along, gravity held them.

* * *

One second he just was and the next he was fallen. He knew of his demise at the very moment movement turned into fact, the sheer second it hit – flying lights and a scream, just one, it dug hard enough into his memory – and then he stood somehow. His corpse stood, crashed and crushed and utterly shattered, though he was dead on the ground – _he should have been_.

Fifty feet under with responsibility weighting hard upon his head.

* * *

Gellert fled and Albus fell. Again.

Nobody saw it and nobody could know. To the world he was climbing still – to his brother he was dead and all the rest was no more. He became great, as he'd been destined always.

Falling was the air rushing past him. Falling was sliding, his whole life slipping away, his high hopes flying into oblivion. Falling was emptiness carefully concealed, just opening his hands, obeying the pull. He gave all he had – all he had was his mind.

He gave it to the world, openly.

He taught and smiled and invented, like it mattered.

* * *

He wrote complex theories on wrinkled parchment, words and words and curses and curses carrying him into the night until his own existence caught up with him.

If he was nothing this was a tribute to the world, his greatness, immense, nameless. If he was alive it was something else, something he didn't want to know. If he was alive still, if he allowed himself to feel, then every theory blended together – and knowledge sang a song to him, a bitter song for a scribbled-out name he'd never be able to escape.

(_Gellert. Gellert_ – )

He crossed it out and crumpled the page.

It kept coming back under his quill.

(_Gellert – Ariana – no –_ )

His love kept writing, again and again, surging back from forgotten abysses, it never died. Perhaps he loved his sister's murderer. Or perhaps he had blood – himself – on his hands.

He craved the emptiness, then, and drowned his thinking in yet another discovery.

* * *

Love lived forever, he learned, and human beings did not.

Love was huge and cruel and love was everything. It hurt, it burned, refusing the relief of blissful oblivion – it never let him rest for he did not deserve that chance. Love was the scar on the inside of his soul, the images engraved into him, flashing by before he could reach sleep. Ariana fell and Gellert fell and his mother fell, graceful and young forever, though it was always him hitting the ground. It was his fate, and only fair.

One day he would fall, too, from some great height, and someone would shut their eyes tight and remember the arching of his body as he plummetted towards ground…

* * *

He died, one day, at the top of the highest tower in a castle he called his only home.

He flew, he fell, and never felt the ground.

(_And for him the phoenix sang, sad, unbearably sweet_.)


End file.
